The late Archbishop of Canterbury spoke derisively of agitators. The
Rev. Stewart Headlam asked whether "Paul, and even our Lord Himself,
were not agitators." Mr. Headlam might have asked, where would the
Archbishop be but for that superb, irrepressible agitator Luther? The
agitator is a public advocate who speaks when others are silent. Mr.
C. D. Collet, of whom I here write, was an agitator who understood his
business.
Agitation for the public welfare is a feature of civilisation. In a
despotic land it works by what means it can. In a free country it seeks
its ends by agencies within the limits of law. The mastery of the means
left open for procuring needful change, the right use, and the full use
of these facilities, constitute the business of an agitator.
For more than fifty years I was associated with Mr. Collet in public
affairs, and I never knew any one more discerning than he in choosing
a public cause, or on promoting it with greater plenitude of resource.
Many a time he has come to my house at midnight to discuss some new
point he thought important. A good secretary is the inspirer of the
movement he represents. Mr. Collet habitually sought the opinion of
those for whom he acted. Every letter and every document was laid before
them. On points of policy or terms of expression he deferred to the
views of others, not only with acquiescence, but willingness. During the
more than twenty-four years in which I was chairman of the Travelling
Tax Abolition Committee and he was secretary, I remember no instance to
the contrary of his ready deference. His fertility of suggestion was a
constant advantage. Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden (who had an instinct of
fitness) would select the most suitable for the purpose in hand. In
early life Mr. Collet had studied for the law, and retained a passion
for it which proved very useful where Acts of Parliament were the
barricades which had to be stormed.
Mr. Collet was educated at Bruce Castle School, conducted by the father
of Sir Rowland Hill. Collet's political convictions were shown by his
becoming secretary for the People's Charter Union, intended to restore
the Chartist movement (then mainly under Irish influence) to English
hands. In 1848, he and W. J. Linton were sent as deputies to Paris, as
bearers of English congratulations on the establishment of the Republic.
Afterwards he fell himself under the fascination of an Oriental-minded
diplomat, David Urquhart, and became a romantic Privy Council loyalist.
Mr. Urquhart was Irish, eloquent, dogmatic, and infallible--at least,
he put down with ostentatious insolence any one who ventured to demur
to anything he said. If the astounded questioner pleaded that he was
ignorant of the facts adduced, he was told his ignorance was a crime.
Mr. Urquhart believed that all wisdom lay in treaties and Blue Books,
and that the first duty of every politician was to insist on beheading
Lord Palmerston, who had betrayed England to Russia. How Mr. Collet--a
lover of freedom and inquiry--could be subjugated by doctrines which, if
not conceived in madness, were commanded by arts akin to madness, is the
greatest mystery of conversion I have known. I have seen Mr. Bright come
out of the House of Commons, and observing Mr. Collet, would advance and
offer his hand, when Mr. Collet would put his hands behind him, saying
"he could not take the hand of a man who knew Lord Palmerston was
an impostor and ought to know he was a traitor, and still maintained
political relations with him." Yet Mr. Collet had great and well-founded
regard for Mr. Bright.
It was an intrepid undertaking to attempt a repeal of taxes which for
143 years had fettered, as they were designed to do, knowledge from
reaching the people. The history of this achievement was given in the
_Weekly Times and Echo_, While these taxes were in force, neither
cheap newspapers nor cheap books could exist. Since their repeal great
newspapers and great publishing houses have arisen. While these Acts
were in force every newspaper proprietor was treated as a blasphemer and
a writer of sedition, and compelled to give securities of L300 against
the exercise of his infamous tendencies; every paper-maker was regarded
as a thief, and the officers of the Excise dogged every step of his
business with hampering, exacting, and humiliating suspicion. Every
reader found with an unstamped paper in his possession was liable to
a fine of L20. The policy of our agitation was to observe scrupulous
fairness to every Government with which we came in contact, and to heads
of departments with whom unceasing war was waged. Their personal honour
was never confused with the mischievous Acts they were compelled to
enforce. Our rule was steadfastness in fairness and courtesy. The
cardinal principle of agitation Collet maintained was that the most
effectual way to obtain the repeal of a bad law was to insist upon it
being carried out, when its effect would soon be resented by those
who maintain its application to others. Charles Dickens' "Household
Narrative of Current Events," published weekly, was a violation of the
Act which required news to be a month old when published on unstamped
paper. Dickens was not selected from malice, for he was friendly to the
freedom of the press, but from policy, as an Act carried out which would
ruin a popular favourite like Dickens, would excite indignation against
it. A clamour was raised by friends in Parliament against the supineness
of the Inland Revenue Board, for tolerating a wealthy metropolitan
offender, while it prosecuted and relentlessly ruined small men in the
provinces for doing the same thing. Bright called attention in the House
to the Electric Telegraph Company, who were advertising every night in
the lobbies news, not an hour old, on unstamped paper, in violation of
the law.
It took thirty years of supplication to get art galleries open on
Sunday, when the application of the law to the privilege of the rich
would have opened them in ten years. The rich are allowed to violate
the law against working on Sundays, for which the poor man is fined
and imprisoned. An intelligent committee on the Balfour-Chamberlain
principle of Retaliation would soon put an end to the laws which hamper
the progress.
Professor Alexander Bain, remarkable for his fruitfulness in philosophic
device, asked my opinion on a project of constructing a barometer of
personal character, which varies by time and event. Everybody is aware
of somebody who has changed, but few notice that every one is changing
daily, for better or for worse. What Bain wanted was to contrive some
instrument by which these variations could be denoted.
No doubt men must be judged on the balance of their ascertained merits.
Bishop Butler's maxim that "Probability is the guide of life," implies
proportion, and is the rule whereby character is to be judged. For years
I conceived a strong dislike of Sir Robert Peel, because, as Secretary
of State, he refused the petition of Mrs. Carlile to be allowed to leave
the prison (where she ought never to have been sent) before the time of
her accouchement Peel's refusal was unfeeling and brutal. Yet in after
life it was seen that Sir Robert possessed great qualities, and made
great sacrifices in promoting the public good; and I learned to hold in
honour one whom I had hated for half a century.
For many years I entertained an indifferent estimate of Sir William
Harcourt. It began when my friend Mr. E. J. H. Craufurd, M.P.,
challenged him to a duel, which he declined--justifiably it might be, as
he was a larger man than his antagonist, and offered a wider surface
for bullets. Declining was meritorious in my eyes, as duels had then a
political prestige, and there was courage in refusing. The cause of the
challenge I thought well founded. In the earlier years of Sir William's
Parliamentary life I had many opportunities of observing him, and
thought he appeared as more contented with himself than any man is
entitled to be on this side of the Millennium. When member for Oxford as
a Liberal, he declared against payment of members of Parliament on the
ground of expense. The expense would have been one halfpenny a year to
each elector. This seemed to me so insincere that I ceased to count
him as a Liberal who could be trusted. Yet all the while he had great
qualities as a combatant of the highest order, in the battles of
Liberalism, who sacrificed himself, lost all prospect of higher
distinction, and incurred the undying rage of the rich (who have
Canning's "ignorant impatience" of taxation) by instituting death
duties, services which entitled him to honour and regard.
I heard Lord Salisbury's acrid, sneering, insulting, contemptuous
speeches in the House of Commons against working men seeking the
franchise. What gave this man the right to speak with bitterness and
scorn of the people whose industry kept him in the opulence he so little
deserved? Some friends of mine, who had personal intercourse with him,
described him as a fair-spoken gentleman. All the while, and to the end
of his days, he had the cantankerous tongue in diplomacy which brought
contempt and distrust upon Englishmen abroad, while his jests at Irish
members of Parliament, whom his Government had subjected to humiliation
in prison, denoted, thought many, the innate savagery of his order,
when secure from public retribution--which people should remember who
continue its impunity. Difference of opinion is to be respected, but it
is difficult even for philosophy to condone scorn. If recklessness in
language be the mark of inferiority in workmen, what is it in those of
high position who compromise a nation by their ungoverned tongues?
Among things bygone are certain ideas of popular influence which have
had their day--some too long a day, judging from their effects. The
general misconceptions in them still linger in some minds, and it may be
useful to recall a prominent one.
The madness of thoroughness are two words I have never seen brought
together, yet they are allied oftener than most persons suppose.
Thoroughness, in things which concern others, has limits. Justness is
greater than thoroughness. There is great fascination in being thorough.
A man should be thorough as far as he can. This implies that he must
have regard to the rights and reasonable convenience of others, which is
the natural limit of all the virtues. Sometimes a politician will adopt
the word "thorough" as his motto, forgetful that it was the motto of
Strafford, who was a despot on principle, and who perished through the
terror which his success inspired. Cromwell was thorough in merciless
massacres, which have made his name hateful in Irish memory for three
centuries, perpetuating the distrust of English rule. Vigour is a
notable attribute, but unless it stops short of rigour, it jeopardises
itself.
Thorough means the entire carrying out of a principle to its end. This
can rarely be done in human affairs. When a person finds he cannot do
all he would, he commonly does nothing, whereas his duty is to do what
he can--to continue to assert and maintain the principle he thinks
right, and persist in its application to the extent of his power. To
suspend endeavour at the point where persistence would imperil the just
right of others, is the true compromise in which there is no shame,
as Mr. John Morley, in his wise book on "Compromise," has shown.
Temperance--a word of infinite wholesomeness in every department of
life, because it means use and restraint--has been retarded and
rendered repellent to thousands by the "thorough" partisans who have
put prohibition into it Can absolute prohibition be enforced universally
where conviction is opposed, without omnipresent tyranny, which makes
it hateful instead of welcome? Even truth itself, the golden element
of trust and progress, has to be limited by relevance, timeliness and
utility. He who would speak everything he knows or believes to be true,
to all persons, at all times, in every place, would soon become the most
intolerable person in every society, and make lying itself a relief. A
man should stand by the truth and act upon it, wherever he can, and he
should be known by his fidelity to it But that is a very different thing
from obtruding it in unseemly ways, in season and out of season, which
has ruined many a noble cause. The law limits its exaction of truth to
evidence necessary for justice. There are cases, such as occurred during
the Civil War of emancipation in America, where slave-hunters would
demand of the man, who had seen a fugitive slave, pass by, "which way he
had run." The humane bystander questioned, would point in the opposite
direction. Had he pointed truly, it would have cost the slave his life.
This was lying for humanity, and it would be lying to call it by any
other name, for it _was_ lying. Thoroughness would have murdered the
fugitive.
The thoroughness of the Puritans brought upon the English nation the
calamities of the Restoration. Richelieu, in France, was thorough in his
policy of centralisation. He was a butcher on principle, and his name
became a symbol of murder. He circumvented everything, and pursued every
one with implacable ferocity, who was likely to withstand him. He put
to death persons high and low, he destroyed municipalism in France, and
changed the character of political society for the worse. The French
Revolutionists did but tread in the footsteps of the political priest.
They were all thorough, and as a consequence they died by each other's
hands, and ruined liberty in France and in Europe. The gospel of
thoroughness was preached by Carlyle and demoralised Continental
Liberals. In the revolution of 1848 they spared lives all round. They
even abolished the punishment of death.
But when Louis Napoleon applied the doctrine of "thorough" to the
greatest citizens of Paris, and shot, imprisoned, or exiled statesmen,
philosophers and poets, Madame Pulzsky said to me, the "Republicans
thought their leniency a mistake, and if they had power again they
would cut everybody's throat who stood in the way of liberty." As usual,
thoroughness had begotten ferocity.
Carlyle's eminent disciples of thoroughness justified the massacre and
torture of the blacks in Jamaica, for which Tennyson, Kingsley, and
others defended Governor Eyre. Lord Cardwell, in the House of Commons,
admitted in my hearing that there had been "unnecessary executions."
"Unnecessary executions" are murders--but in thoroughness unnecessary
executions are not counted. Wherever we have heard of pitilessness
in military policy, or in speeches in our Parliament, we see
exemplifications of the gospel of Thoroughness, which is madness if not
limited by justice and forbearance.
Conventional thoroughness dwells in extremes. If political economy was
thoroughly carried out, there might be great wealth, but no happiness.
Enjoyment is waste, since it involves expenditure. The Inquisition,
which made religion a name of terror, was but thoroughness in piety.
Pope, himself a Catholic, warned us that--
"For virtue's self may too much zeal be had.
The worst of madness is a saint run mad."
Fanatics forget (they would not be fanatics if they remembered) that in
public affairs, true thoroughness is limited by the rights of others.
There is no permanent progress without this consideration. The best of
eggs will harden if boiled too much. The mariner who takes no account of
the rocks, wrecks his ship--which it is not profitable to forget.
It is natural that those who crave practical knowledge of the unseen
world should look about the universe for some chink, through which they
can see what goes on there, and believe they have met with truants
who have made disclosures to them. I have no commerce of that kind to
relate. It is hard to think that when Jupiter is silent--when the Head
of the Gods speaketh not--that He allows angels with traitor tongues to
betray to men the mysteries of the world He has Himself concealed.
Can it be that He permits wayward ghosts to creep over the boundary of
another world and babble His secrets at will? This would imply
great lack of discipline at the outposts of paradise. There is great
fascination in clandestine communication with the kingdom of the dead.
I own that noises of the night, not heard in the day, seem supernatural.
The wind sounds like the rush of the disembodied--hinges creak with
human emotion--winds moan against window panes like persons in pain.
Creatures of the air and earth flit or leap in pursuit of prey, like the
shadows of ghosts or the furtive steps of murdered souls. Are they more
than
"The sounds sent down at night
By birds of passage in their flight"?
For believing less where others believe more, for expressing decision of
opinion which the reader may resent, I do but follow in the footsteps of
Confucius, who, as stated by Allen Upward, "declared that a principle
of belief or even a rule of morality binding on himself need not bind a
disciple whose own conscience did not enjoin it on him." Confucius, says
his expositor, thus "reached a height to which mankind have hardly yet
lifted their eyes, and announced a freedom compared with which ours is
an empty name."